Amanda
I just had the Tower come up for me in a question about what's happening with the state of the world—one of those BIG questions.
At first I wondered if it was suggesting another act of terrorism. I turned to Oswald Wirth's book, The Tarot of the Magicians, and it gave me such an important insight. Afterall, there are always cataclysms and terrorist acts, but what's behind it all?
Wirth describes the Tower as the intensive exploitation of the Earth that eventually leads to terrifying social cataclysm. At the basis of it is the instinct toward individualization, which I take as the "every man for himself" or Ayn Rand-type philosophy. We build up false towers like Wall Street and banks-gone-mad and, when lightning strikes, everyone bails, mortgages are sold off, homes foreclosed, etc. It also suggests global warming and the extinction of species.
Terrorism is just another aspect of the same thing except the ideology stands in for the individualism. And, on the metaphoric level, even the earth itself tries to shake off the concretization of the land.
Any other thoughts?
Well, to put it simply, my interpretation would be that the state of the world is changing.
Thank you all. Really good perspectives. I like the idea that it is the end of a paradigm. But how, then, is the Tower different from the Death/Rebirth card?
For me, the Tower is man-made, and Death/Rebirth is more in line with spiritual law. So, when I say that the state of the world is changing above, I mean that "man" and his "crap" are coming up against the powers-that-be, and that which is not "real" or "true" to that natural law is falling away... because usually what is left from the Tower's destruction, is the truth. It's like God's reality-check.. if we want to go religious here.
Tower = More like ascension where a person learns from their mistakes.. and Death = transformation, where mistakes aren't really made in the first place.
Sometimes I wish I had visual aids.